The mobile communications industry is in the process of undergoing significant change. New terminals are introduced on the market with very different multimedia capabilities, resolutions, screen size, etc. The new terminals can and will connect to various networks, such as: GSM, TDMA, GPRS, EDGE, WCDMA, etc. Each network can provide a different bit rate to a user. The bit rate can range from a few kilobits per second (kbps) to hundreds of kbps.
The amount of time required to transfer information is directly affected by the available bit rate. In information browsing, very long transfer times are usually unacceptable to a user. If a server had information about a perceived bit rate by a terminal, the server could adapt the content that it sends to the client, accordingly. However, in general, network elements between a server and a client can be complex and cannot be modeled by a single bit rate parameter.
In prior art information browsing, the pages to send to a client are decided based on hardware and browser software used; however, the content is sent regardless of the bit rate.
Video streaming systems adapt the content to network conditions, but do not actually explicitly compute the bit rate. Instead, such systems apply congestion control techniques to pace the data sent to the client. Congestion control is performed by controlling the number of unacknowledged packets (called a window) sent to a client.
Methods described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,802,106 and 6,076,113 compute the bit rate for TCP communications by measuring amounts of data received per unit of time without considering idle time between transactions and are therefore, not suitable methods for information browsing.